To the king of the Brownies--
By helping the Pixies, you are in violation of a treaty agreeing to stay out of any fighting over Glimmering Woods. Therefore, we have taken the Brownie, Mr. Willimaker, and will hold him as our captive until you also do something for the Fairies. We want a sock off the foot of the Demon Kovol. It shouldn't be a problem for you. We hear you're going to see him anyway.
Refuse to help us and you will never see Mr. Willimaker again. Should you fail with the Demon Kovol, no one will ever see you again.
Cheers!
The Fairies
Elliot crumpled the note into his pocket and yelled again, "Mr. Willimaker!" Then he yelled, "Fairies! I want to talk to you!"
But there was no answer.
He was alone in the Underworld, with no map either back to Burrowsville or ahead to Demon Territory. And he thought he heard a sound nearby. Something was coming toward him.
Elliot hurried back to camp and gathered up both his and Mr. Willimaker's bundles. With his arms full, he began racing in the direction they'd been walking yesterday. He didn't know if he was still walking toward Demon Territory or not. But he did know he was moving away from whatever was following him.
Maybe it was Goblins, who knew he was alone and wanted revenge for his ending the Goblin war.
Maybe it was Fairies, coming to capture him before he could find Kovol.
Maybe it was the ice cream man on his secret Underworld route. That'd be cool, but he sort of doubted it. Elliot didn't have money for ice cream anyway.
Elliot ran so quickly through the bushes that he lost track of where he was going. All that mattered was getting away. Then he burst into a small clearing and took a step onto something that wasn't hard ground.
It was a kind of mud, but no ordinary mud. His foot sank into the mud almost up to his knee. His second foot landed in the mud before he had time to stop, and he went in up to his thigh.
He didn't think he was in quicksand. Elliot had never been caught in quicksand before, due to the fact that there was no quicksand in Sprite's Hollow. But this wasn't sand at all. It was mud, and the mud seemed to be holding him in. The more he struggled, the more tightly the mud held on.
"King Elliot? It's me. Where are you?"
Elliot turned his head toward the sound. It wasn't Goblins or Fairies chasing him. It was Patches, who had disobeyed both him and her father to follow them into the Underworlderness. But she was about to save his life, so he decided to ignore her rule-breaking.
"I'm here," he called. "I need help!"
Patches poofed from wherever she was to stand on solid ground near Elliot. "Oh," she said. "Gripping mud."
"That's what this is?"
She giggled. "In case you didn't know, you're not supposed to walk on it."
"Now you tell me. How do I get out?"
Patches giggled again. "You can't. Well, I mean you can't get out by yourself. The more you try, the more you'll get stuck."
"So can you get me out?"
"If I get you out, then you can't get mad at me for following you, okay?"
Elliot smiled. "If you hadn't followed me, I'd be stuck here forever."
Patches knelt on the ground. "Okay, so here's how it works. I'm going to hand you a branch. You have to let me pull you out by myself. Don't help me at all. Anything you do will only make the mud hold you tighter."
"I'm pretty heavy for you," Elliot said.
"I'm pretty strong for me too." Patches snapped off a branch of a nearby tree and held it out to Elliot. "Just hold on."
Elliot held to the branch. Once Patches started to loosen him from the mud, he wiggled his legs to work his body upward. Instantly, the gripping mud pulled him down again.